GHC 5.02.1 is available. Currently the source, x86-linux and
sparc-solaris tarballs are available. We hope to add binary
builds for Win32 and Alpha early next week. -- J
The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 5.02.1
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We are pleased to announce a new patchlevel release of the Glasgow
Haskell Compiler (GHC), version 5.02.1. The source distribution is
freely available via the World-Wide Web, under a BSD-style license.
See below for download details. Pre-built packages for Linux,
FreeBSD, Solaris and Win32 are also available.
Haskell is a standard lazy functional programming language; the
current language version is Haskell 98, agreed in December 1998.
GHC is a state-of-the-art programming suite for Haskell. Included is
an optimising compiler generating good code for a variety of
platforms, together with an interactive system for convenient, quick
development. The distribution includes space and time profiling
facilities, a large collection of libraries, and support for various
language extensions, including concurrency, exceptions, and foreign
language interfaces (C, C++, whatever).
A wide variety of Haskell related resources (tutorials, libraries,
specifications, documentation, compilers, interpreters, references,
contact information, links to research groups) are available from the
Haskell home page at
http://www.haskell.org/
GHC's Web page lives at
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
What's new in 5.02.1
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Fixed various bugs, some of which caused GHCi to crash or misbehave.
Some documentation fixes. Nothing major.
What's new in 5.02
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5.02 incorporates many small refinements and bug fixes over the previous
stable release (5.00.2). There are no major changes. =20
- Much improved support for Windows platforms. Binary builds are
now entirely freestanding. There's no need to install Cygwin or
Mingwin to use it. It's a one-click-install-and-off-you-go story
now.
- Several small changes to bring GHC into line with the newest
Haskell 98=20
report.
- GHCi (the interactive system) now works on Windows.
- Partial FFI support in GHCi. At the moment, foreign import (both
static and dynamic) is supported on x86 and sparc platforms.
- A compacting garbage collector, to try and reduce space use.
- Experimental: partial support for hierarchical module names.
- Experimental: following heroic hacking by Ken Shan, 5.02 now
works on Alpha (Tru64 only). Many 64-bit bugs have been shaken
out. At the moment only the batch-mode compiler works -- no GHCi
or native code generator yet.
We've found and fixed more bugs than you could possibly imagine. A
big thank-you to all those who reported bugs in the 5.00.X series. We
claim to have fixed almost all reported bugs. In general we've spent
a large amount of effort trying to improve the stability of the
system relative to 5.00.X. (Famous last words ...)
For full details see the release notes:
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/5.02/set/release-5-02.html
How to get it
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The easy way is to go to the WWW page, which should be
self-explanatory:
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
We supply binary builds in the native package format for various
flavours of Linux and BSD, and in InstallShield form for Windows
folks. Everybody else gets a .tar.gz which can be installed where you
want.
Once you have the distribution, please follow the pointers in the
README file to find all of the documentation about this release.
On-line GHC-related resources
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Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web:
GHC home page http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
Haskell home page http://www.haskell.org/
comp.lang.functional FAQ http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/faq.html
System requirements
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To compile programs with GHC, you need a machine with 64+MB memory, GNU
C
and perl. This release is known to work on the following platforms:
* i386-unknown-{linux,freebsd,mingw32}
* sparc-sun-solaris2
* alpha-dec-osf3
Ports to the following platforms should be relatively easy (for a
wunderhacker), but haven't been tested due to lack of time/hardware:
* hppa1.1-hp-hpux{9,10}
* i386-unknown-solaris2
* mips-sgi-irix{5,6}
* {rs6000,powerpc}-ibm-aix
The builder's guide included in distribution gives a complete
run-down of what ports work; an on-line version can be found at
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/5.02/building/building-guide.html
Mailing lists
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We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, use
the web interfaces at
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-usershttp://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-bugs
There are several other haskell and ghc-related mailing lists on
www.haskell.org; for the full list, see
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/
Please report bugs using our SourceForge page at
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http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghc/
or send them to glasgow-haskell-bugs@haskell.org.
GHC users hang out on glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org. Bleeding
edge CVS users party on cvs-ghc@haskell.org.